A Study of the Oral Vocabularies of Severely Subnormal Patients

Vocabulary needs in augmentative and alternative communication: a sample of conversational topics between staff providing services to adults with learning difficulties and their service users

“…The total number of conversational topics recorded was 362 out of a possible 384. The conversations were analysed for frequency of topic occurrence: frequency is commonly used as a measure for studies of oral vocabulary ( Mein & O'Connor 1960) and communication lexicons ( Carlson 1981; Walker & Tebbs 1978)…”

“…a core of words and concepts selected on the basis of frequency of use, and use information gathered from studies of normal language development. The concept of a ‘core’ appears to have originated from the work of Mein & O'Connor (1960). In a study of the oral vocabularies of 40 people with learning difficulties living in London hospitals, the above authors reported that this adult group's vocabularies contained more ‘core’ words but fewer ‘fringe’ words (words used less frequently) than that of a sample of children without a learning difficulty matched for mental age.…”

“…In a study of the oral vocabularies of 40 people with learning difficulties living in London hospitals, the above authors reported that this adult group's vocabularies contained more ‘core’ words but fewer ‘fringe’ words (words used less frequently) than that of a sample of children without a learning difficulty matched for mental age. Mein & O'Connor (1960) concluded that vocabulary development for the adults was limited by a shared routine and culture. Following the hospital closure programme, it seems reasonable to suppose that the move to a community‐based life where people are less likely to share experience to the same extent will affect ‘core’ and ‘fringe’ vocabulary needs.…”

A Study of the Oral Vocabularies of Severely Subnormal Patients Iii. Core Vocabulary, Verbosity, and Repetitiousness

“…The description of the sample, the techniques employed in obtaining the defectives' responses, and the scoring scheme is given fully elsewhere (Mein, 1962;Mein and O'Connor, 1960). In summary, eighty severely subnormal patients from two mental deficiency hospitals and with chronological ages of 10-30 years and intelligence quotients of 18-49 were interviewed individually upon nine different occasions.…”

Written Composition at 10 Years as an Aspect of Linguistic Development

“…For this purpose, the different verbs used by the children were studied. Each separate word of verbal type was counted, in the same way as by Burroughs (1951) and Mein and O'Connor (1960) in their word counts. In the two compositions, the forty-five children used 268 different verbs.…”